The University of Westminster’s Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media (CREAM) collaborated with Regent Street Cinema to organise an event series marking the release of Professor Joshua Oppenheimer’s latest film, The End. The event honoured two decades of Oppenheimer’s innovative work exploring impunity and the power of cinema and featured a masterclass and retrospective screenings of his past films, offering insight into his artistic approach and impact.
The End is Oppenheimer’s third feature film, made as part of his long-term research, supported by Westminster, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and others, addressing cinema's power to depict how imagination and genres of storytelling condition human consciousness and social life. The End is an apocalyptic musical set 25 years after an environmental disaster renders Earth uninhabitable. It follows a wealthy family living in a luxurious bunker, whose routine is disrupted by a stranger’s arrival. The film explores themes of guilt, denial and self-deception, using the musical genre as a vehicle for social critique. The film has received widespread acclaim, including a five-star review from The Guardian.
Professor Oppenheimer has been affiliated with the University since 2007. His previous films, which were also developed in conjunction with CREAM, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), were both Oscar-nominated and internationally celebrated, earning numerous awards. The End was developed as part of an AHRC-funded project, Documentary of the Imagination, awarded to Oppenheimer and Professor Rosie Thomas in 2019.
The masterclass and two retrospective screenings took place at Regent Street Cinema on 31 March and 1 April. On the first day, Professor Joshua Oppenheimer spoke to Professor Rosie Thomas about the key themes connecting his work as a film director, activist and academic, and the threads linking his latest film with his previous works. Following the masterclass, Regent Street Cinema screened The Look of Silence which documents how Oppenheimer’s work filming perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide allowed a family of survivors to discover the identity of their son’s murderers. The youngest brother, determined to break the spell of silence and fear under which the survivors live, confronts the men responsible for the killing, something unimaginable in a country where killers remain in power.
The retrospective concluded with a screening of Joshua Oppenheimer’s award-winning debut feature, The Act of Killing. The critically acclaimed documentary examines a society where perpetrators of mass violence are seen as heroes, as unrepentant death squad leaders are challenged to recreate their roles in past atrocities. The result is a surreal and unsettling cinematic experience, offering a chilling glimpse into the minds of mass murderers and the corrupt system of impunity that enables them.
As well as this, Regent Street Cinema hosted a screening of The End along with a Q&A on 29 March, with Joshua Oppenheimer and one of the lead actors George MacKay in attendance. The Q&A was moderated by film journalist Leigh Singer.
Joshua Oppenheimer said: “Speaking about my filmmaking alongside special screenings of The End, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence at the University's Regent Street Cinema is a true homecoming – thrilling and moving alike. All three films should be impossible in today’s world. They simply could not exist without the supportive space that Westminster, CREAM, and my fellow researchers Rosie Thomas and the late and beloved Joram ten Brink created for deep reflection and experimentation. In this way, the Westminster family made the impossible a reality.”
The masterclass as well as Joshua Oppenheimer’s films directly contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4: Quality Education and 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. Since 2019, the University of Westminster has used the SDGs holistically to frame strategic decisions to help students and colleagues fulfil their potential and contribute to a more sustainable, equitable and healthier society.
Learn more about CREAM at Westminster.
Photo credit: Matthias Kispert
